Help. I can't open my installed game

[Lea930]

I've got a game called "Jakten på matteviruset". I think the english name is "Math Heroes". It's from 97 and I liked playing it as a child so I downloaded and started a Windows 98 VirtualBox to run it.

I've installed Windows 98 and I have then installed my game via a CD, however when I try to run the game I get an error message telling me this:

"ApplicationError

Exception EInOutError in module MATH.EXE at 0003:3CDA. File not found."

My only option is to click "OK" and then the game closes down and I return to my win98 desktop.

I've tried using an iso-file of the game but I still get the same results as with the CD.

I don't know if the problem lies in the game, the CD, the OS or the virtualbox!

[mpack]

What is your host OS? Did you try running this software in current Windows, or did you just assume it wouldn't work? FYI I still have software that was written for 16bit Windows 3.1, that still works just fine in 32bit Windows (at least up to Win7, I've not tried beyond that). [ The software in question is Borland Resource Workshop v4.5, the best ever Windows resource editor in my opinion. I keep meaning to hunt down a replacement ].

Your error looks like a 16bit Turbo Pascal or Turbo C exception that is raised on a file I/O error - and your file I/O error seems plain: there's a file missing. So, that would be a problem with the install set you have there.

Note however that the error is with "Math.exe". If I had to guess I'd say that this old game doesn't like (doesn't recognize the nature of) your modern host's floating point capability. Therefore the software is trying to load a module for a Floating Point Coprocessor emulator, but can't find the required file containing the emulation code. It's a pity it doesn't name the file.

[Lea930]

I have windows 10. When I tried to run it it said it couldn't run the applicatin. My boyfriend has windows 8 but there's no difference when I try to run it on his computer.

I'm sorry but I don't get what all that means. Can i retrieve the missing file somehow?

Is there any way to solve this? The game can't be found anywhere, not buyable, not even second hand, I don't find any torrents. I can't even find videos of the gamplay on youtube... I'd really like to make it work.

[mpack]

I may be wrong (never tested) but I believe 16bit WOW support was dropped in Windows 8.0 onwards, so yes: you would see no difference between Win8 and Win10 in this regard. It might run on a Win7 physical machine... or more likely it would crash with exactly the same error since I assume the problem is with supporting the CPU - which didn't exist (by a long way) at the time the game was published.

I know of no way to solve this: it isn't actually a VirtualBox problem, so you would have to get support from the makers of the game. I realize that isn't practical, but it remains the fact of the situation. If you Google for the error you may learn what the missing file is, but I had no such luck when I did a quick search. Unfortunately a very similar error message remains in Borland derived products to this day, so homing in on the precise compiler version will be difficult.

[ErikW]

I have a few suggestions that might help.

Turn off all of the hardware acceleration options. Some programs don't work on very fast CPUs and this may slow down the emulation enough for the program to work.

Set the graphics memory and RAM sizes smaller. Make sure that your disk is 2GB or smaller. Some programs don't work right if they see more disk space or memory than they expect..

If possible, install a real Windows 95 system on a spare IDE disk drive (use only the first 2GB or less). That will tell you if the game basically works with Windows 95. You may have to set your SATA controller for IDE emulation.

The floating point coprocessor implementation on your computer should still support the subset of instructions used by older applications. However, if the program uses the instructions to read the CPU capabilities that could be a problem.

You may have better luck using Microsoft Virtual PC (do not have any VirtualBox VM or programs running at the same time!). I'm using Microsoft Virtual PC 2003 SP1 for some Windows 95 applications. This may be another way to test if the game can run in some other configuration. Virtual PC has less features than VirtualBox but it emulates much older PC hardware.

Make sure that your game CD is not a mixed mode disc (with both data and audio tracks). If so, then you may have problems getting it to work. I don't know if VirtualBox supports audio tracks on a CD or if it can handle mixed mode CDs. I've worked around that problem by changing game options in some cases.

[mpack]

It will do no harm to try, but I doubt that using Virtual PC will help. VMs (whether under VPC or VBox) see the actual host CPU and FPU, so if that is what it doesn't like, it will continue to not like it.

VirtualBox doesn't support audio CDs, but I don't see how that can be relevent here: the VM evidently can read the CD, otherwise it wouldn't be loading the game - and then crashing. And it would crash with an I/O error, not a math library error.